New Releases by Stephen Jay Gould

Voici l''histoire de la vie sur notre Terre, l''histoire de la naissance, du développement, de l''extinction de millions d''espèces pendant un demi-milliard d''années. Aucun domaine de la science n''exerce une telle fascination. Le Livre de la vie réunit avec audace l''art et la science. Au texte dû aux meilleurs spécialistes et fondé sur les recherches les plus récentes, s''ajoutent de superbes illustrations originales; nombre d''organismes sont représentés dans ces pages de façon toute nouvelle, et certains pour la première fois. De clairs schémas et tableaux explicatifs jalonnent ce roman de l''évolution. Le récit commence il y a plus de 500 millions d''années avec l''extraordinaire diversité des créatures marines du Cambrien. Puis, il y a 350 millions d''années, la vie conquiert la terre ferme et se diversifie : insectes, amphibiens, reptiles et dinosaures font leur apparition. Après l''une des plus dévastatrices extinctions de toute l''histoire évolutive, de petits mammifères prennent le relais et se développent en une incroyable profusion, engendrant finalement nos ancêtres. C''est alors que débute l''histoire fascinante et encore controversée de l''émergence humaine. L''histoire de la vie animale se mêle à celle de la planète entière, l''évolution de ses reliefs, de son climat, de ses plantes. Elle met en lumière la complexité des relations entre espèces, les phénomènes subtils d''adaptation et brutaux d''extinction. Enfin, l''histoire de la vie est aussi celle de la science qui l''étudie, l''aventure des chercheurs et la passion du savoir, et l''histoire de nos représentations et de nos images, que Stephen Jay Gould narre avec brio.

El exito obtenido por la Historia del tiempo, de Stephen Hawking, propicio la creacion, en 1991, de esta coleccion de divulgacion cientifica que fue dirigida durante largo tiempo por dos personas de formacion humanistica: de ahi ciertas contaminaciones al inicio de la coleccion. Sin embargo, cuando Jose Manuel Sanchez Ron se hizo cargo de ella, dio un aprobado a la gestion anterior. En esta coleccion, quiza la mas ambiciosa de todas las de divulgacion cientifica que se editan en espanol, se han publicado obras de Stephen Jay Gould, Carl Sagan, lan Stewart, Edward O. Wilson, Antonio Damasio, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Ilya Prigogine, John D. Barrow, Rita Levi Montalcini, Richard P. Feynman, Roger Penrose, Steven Weinberg, Rachel Carson, Francisco Garcia Olmedo, Francisco Yndurain o Jose Manuel Sanchez Ron. En este libro de divulgacion cientifica el autor explica por que fue necesario que un ministro britanico resultase herido en la nalga izquierda para que Darwin llegase a escribir El origen delas especies. Atrapado por esta fascinante historia, el lector se interesara por las treinta y tantas siguientes.

Provides information on developments in evolutionary theory, discussing such topics as the Cambrian population explosion, Velikovsky''s theories, and others.

A noted paleontologist provides the text for this photographic study of eight different collections--from a collection of human artifacts belonging to Peter the Great to Agassy''s fish collection--exploring what collections say about collectors.

A lavishly illustrated catalogue containing nearly 150 photographs (both color and bandw) by some 50 young photographers to accompany a major exhibit presented by the Smithsonian Institution''s National Museum of American Art. Most of the images date to the late 1980s and encompass a wide variety of styles. The volume is 121/2x10" and a number of the photographs are double-page spreads. Includes topical essays by Merry A. Foresta, Karal Ann Marling, and Stephen Jay Gould. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Il y a plus de 500 millions d''années, d''étranges créatures peuplaient les mers: Opabinia avec ses cinq yeux et sa trompe frontale, Anomalocaris, redoutable prédateur à mâchoire circulaire, Hallucigenia dont l''anatomie justifie amplement le nom. Cette faune, fossilisée dans le Schiste de Burgess, est si extraordinaire qu''il a fallu près d''un siècle pour en reconnaître l''originalité, C''est l''histoire de cette révolution scientifique que nous conte ici Stephen Jay Gould, comme une véritable enquête policière. Elle conduit à une profonde remise en cause de nos conceptions traditionnelles. Il nous faut désormais regarder l''évolution comme un ensemble d''événements à la fois parfaitement logiques et susceptibles d''être rigoureusement expliqués en rétrospective, mais absolument impossibles à prédire et non reproductibles. Le maître mot de l''histoire, celle de la vie comme celle de l''homme, est donc bien celui de contingence. Comme dans le merveilleux film de Frank Capra avec James Stewart, "La vie est belle", par son unicité et son imprévisibilité même.

Essays exploring the nature of evolution

This stunning volume features forty-nine of Church''s most significant paintings and investigates the artistic, scientific, and philosophical influences behind his greatest creations. Published with the National Gallery of Art.

Explains why the diversity of the Burgess Shale is important in understanding our past and evolution.

Il s''agit du quatrième volume où l''auteur réunit des essais publiés à l''origine sous la forme d''une chronique mensuelle dans ##Natural history magazine##. Encore une fois, il reste fidèle à son thème préféré autour duquel s''articulent tous les essais: la théorie de l''évolution. Une vulgarisation de première valeur.

Examines scientific theories pertaining to the measurement of earth''s history.

"Cerion has been described by its leading student W.J. Clench as ''the most difficult genus of pulmonate mollusks to classify.'' No other pulmonate genus shows greater diversity of form; moreover, almost all these divergent morphologies hybridize at their areas of geographic contact. The result is a taxonomic morass that has effectively debarred fruitful biological work on these fascinating snails. The taxonomy of New Providence Island is the most elaborate for the entire genus; more than 90 species of Cerion have been designated, and the distribution of existing names makes no geographic or ecological sense. We use morphometric and genetic techniques to conclude that the living Cerion of New Providence reduce to two semispecies, C. glans (the ribby morphotype) and C gubernatorium (the mottled morphotype). Traces of an extinct C. agassizi line (a prominent taxon of fossil dunes) survive as introgressions into C. gubernatorium populations of southeastern New Providence. These two groups form the basis of Cerion faunas throughout the northern Bahamas; their separation and recognition provide a key to resolving Cerion''s taxonomy both here and elsewhere. Ribby and mottled morphotypes are recurrently evolved ''developmental packages, '' not homologous taxa from place to place -- thereby illustrating the importance of developmental channeling in parallel evolution. We base our taxonomic decision upon a conciliance among many independent criteria. Geographic distribution: parental morphotypes occupy their expected positions, with narrow hybrid zones at predicted points of transition. Morphology of parental populations: differences between ribby and mottled are not simple consequences of one minor alteration in growth, but summed results of several independent covariance sets. Morphotypes differ consistently in amounts of variation and patterns of covariance. Hybrid populations: we find both enhanced variation and patterns of covariance based on developmental disturbance never before detected in parental populations of Cerion. Genetics: samples grouped by frequencies of electromorphs yield the same clusters of ribby and mottled populations specified by morphology. Morphotypes can be distinguished by allele frequencies, while hybrid populations contain rare alleles found in neither parental taxon. The genetic hybrid zone is wider than the morphological zone and asymmetric about it. An appendix allocates all previously named taxa, and resolves the status of 19 designated fossil taxa, plus a new species (Cerion clenchi), into three successive faunas, marking waves of migration correlated with rise and fall of Pleistocene seas"--Page 391

A startling, stunning, entertaining vision of the animal world past and present, with insights into its implications for us today. 69 full-color photographs and 4 black and white.

Un recueil d''essais embrassant des phénomènes très divers, mais articulés autour de la théorie de l''évolution. Huit parties: Perfection et imperfection: trilogie sur le pouce du panda - Darwin & Cie - L''évolution humaine - Science et politique des différences humaines - Le rythme du changement - Les débuts de la vie - Humiliés et offensés - Taille et temps. L''auteur enseigne la géologie, la biologie et l''histoire des sciences à Harvard.

“Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” was Haeckel’s answer—the wrong one—to the most vexing question of nineteenth-century biology: what is the relationship between individual development (ontogeny) and the evolution of species and lineages (phylogeny)? In this, the first major book on the subject in fifty years, Stephen Jay Gould documents the history of the idea of recapitulation from its first appearance among the pre-Socratics to its fall in the early twentieth century. Mr. Gould explores recapitulation as an idea that intrigued politicians and theologians as well as scientists. He shows that Haeckel’s hypothesis—that human fetuses with gill slits are, literally, tiny fish, exact replicas of their water-breathing ancestors—had an influence that extended beyond biology into education, criminology, psychoanalysis (Freud and Jung were devout recapitulationists), and racism. The theory of recapitulation, Gould argues, finally collapsed not from the weight of contrary data, but because the rise of Mendelian genetics rendered it untenable. Turning to modern concepts, Gould demonstrates that, even though the whole subject of parallels between ontogeny and phylogeny fell into disrepute, it is still one of the great themes of evolutionary biology. Heterochrony—changes in developmental timing, producing parallels between ontogeny and phylogeny—is shown to be crucial to an understanding of gene regulation, the key to any rapprochement between molecular and evolutionary biology. Gould argues that the primary evolutionary value of heterochrony may lie in immediate ecological advantages for slow or rapid maturation, rather than in long-term changes of form, as all previous theories proclaimed. Neoteny—the opposite of recapitulation—is shown to be the most important determinant of human evolution. We have evolved by retaining the juvenile characters of our ancestors and have achieved both behavioral flexibility and our characteristic morphology thereby (large brains by prolonged retention of rapid fetal growth rates, for example). Gould concludes that “there may be nothing new under the sun, but permutation of the old within complex systems can do wonders. As biologists, we deal directly with the kind of material complexity that confers an unbounded potential upon simple, continuous changes in underlying processes. This is the chief joy of our science.”